


The Second Time Around

by kuro



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, But Tony was murdered in the Sixties, Halloween, M/M, Magic, Murder, Steve is still an Avenger, it works out somehow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 22:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12567308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro/pseuds/kuro
Summary: But tonight, apparently, wasn’t ‘usually,’ and so he ended up doing exactly that: lighting a highly suspicious candle during a full moon on Hallowe’en.Or: Steve accidentally dabbles in necromany and revives a dead Tony.





	The Second Time Around

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I’m really sorry, since I completely butchered this prompt. Originally, mind-the-wicked wished for a “Hocus Pocus AU only instead of reviving evil witches, Tony revives Steve” and GUESS WHAT I DID? A vaguely Hocus Pocus-inspired AU in which Steve revives Tony. There is a lot of handwaving involved as far as timelines and customs go, so please bear with me. It made sense at the time. I don’t know.

Honestly speaking, Steve’s mother had taught him better. They were Irish, after all, and if there was one thing that they had taken with them on the long way from Ireland to the new world, it was their superstitions and beliefs.

So lighting up that highly suspicious candle during a full moon on Hallowe’en? A terrible idea, no matter how you looked at it. It was something he would never do, usually, the stories that he had been told as a boy far too ingrained into his being to even consider it.

But tonight, apparently, wasn’t ‘usually,’ and so he ended up doing exactly that: lighting a highly suspicious candle during a full moon on Hallowe’en. It has somehow made sense at the time. It had been very dark in the building, after all, and there had been no light at all, so a crummy old candle seemed to be just what he needed. He hated having to admit that after the fact, but he didn’t think at all and just dug out his lighter (always be prepared, although why he had brought a lighter but not a flashlight was beyond him) and light the candle.

At first, everything seemed completely normal. The candle lit easily and burned brightly, and for the first time, Steve could actually see his surroundings as more than vague shadows.

The place was old and dilapidated, with a liberal smattering of cobwebs and animal excrements and all the other unmentionable things that seemed to magically gather in old and dilapidated places. It looked as in the fifty or so years since it had been abandoned, no one had even bothered to try and maybe save at least part of the building. A few old, dusty machines were still around, some of them collapsed due to the rust that was eating them up, but other than that, the place was empty.

Why then, Steve found himself asking, had several supervillains been staking out the place, showing faar too much interest in what essentially was a ruin? He had no answer to that. The only possible interest they could have in this place was the fact that every halfway respectable person would probably go out of their way to avoid it.

While Steve was still considering the emptiness that surrounded him, the candle suddenly made an ominous cracking noise, as if someone had thrown some kind of substance into the fire. For a moment, the candle burned bright blue.

And explosion went off, and Steve, luckily a few steps away from the candle, dropped to the floor and rolled away, covering himself up to avoid damage.

When he dared to lift his head again, the room had filled with thick pluming smoke, rendering Steve almost blind.

Then, something moved. Or rather, stumbled. Steve braced his shield, ready to lash out at whatever came crawling out of the residual smoke, his mind already supplying him with all the dark creatures that he had heard about in the old stories.

However, what followed was an angry ‘fuck’ followed by some creative cursing.

“God, what _is_ this dump?” he heard the same voice say in a disgruntled tone. “Where did I end up?”

And then, out of the smoke, came a young man dressed in a smart if antiquated suit and a carefully styled head of dark locks.

He stopped when he caught sight of Steve, still crouched to the floor with his shield ready to be thrown any moment, and raised an eyebrow.

“Well hel- _lo_ there, darling,” he said with a smirk. “Fancy meeting you here.”

This would have been the perfect moment for the sudden intruder to get acquainted with his shield, but strangely, Steve found himself hesitating. He gripped the leather straps a little more tightly, tensed to react at the slightest provocation.

The stranger shifted his stance once he realised that Steve wasn’t going to answer.

“So,” he said conversationally, “are you the asshole that kidnapped me?”

Steve jerked a little, surprised. “Someone kidnapped you?”

“Well,” the stranger replied, shrugging. “The last thing I remember are two big, burly guys gripping me from behind and bashing me over the head when I tried to get free. And then suddenly, I’m here. You tell me what I’m supposed to think.”

“There wasn’t anyone here until two minutes ago,” Steve said, getting up slowly. He wasn’t sure if this man was telling him the truth or not, but for the moment, he had the impression that he wasn’t an immediate danger.

“Well, I don’t know,” the stranger retorted a little sharply, putting his hands into the pockets of his trousers and lifting his chin defiantly (as if to dare Steve to mess with him). “I was kind of unconscious until a few moments ago.”

“Okay, okay,” Steve said, lifting his free hand in what he hoped was a calming gesture. “I understand. Why don’t you give me your name, and I’ll see if I can help you.”

The stranger snorted in an unkind way, looking at Steve from under his lashes. On someone else, it might have looked seductive, but on this man, it looked vaguely threatening.

Despite, as Steve couldn’t help but notice, his very handsome face.

“I’m Tony Stark,” the stranger finally deigned to reply. “But you know that already, unless you’re living under a rock.”

The name did ring a bell, but he couldn’t place it right now.

“Steve Rogers,” he introduced himself instead. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Stark.”

Mr. Stark gave an amused chuckle.

“Seriously?” he asked, raising a sceptical eyebrow once more. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“That’s my name, yes,” Steve replied, both a little confused and annoyed. “And it’s not that isn’t public knowledge either. Most Americans know who I am.”

“You are so full of yourself,” Mr. Stark groaned. “I mean yeah, the costume is nice, although I don’t get all these alterations you made to it. But using that name is just rude, considering that Steve Rogers is _dead_.”

“I feel pretty alive for a dead person,” Steve replied drily.

“Steve Rogers died in 1945, stop talking nonsense,” Mr. Stark hissed.

“Yeah, and they pulled my out of the ice in 2011, alive,” Steve growled. It happened sometimes that people still insisted that he was a sham because there was no way that he had survived in the ice for so long. Steve, frankly, had no time for those people. “Why is that so difficult to comprehend? It was all over the news, and it’s not like that happened just yesterday.”

Mr. Stark’s eyebrows rose higher.

“2011?” he asked with confusion in his voice.

“Yes,” Steve said, annoyed still. “It’s 2017, this hasn’t been headline news for five years.”

“2017?” Mr. Stark repeated, with actual shock in his voice now. “No, it’s 1967!”

Steve considered the statement for a moment. Either this man was having some kind of episode or he had received such a heavy blow on the head that something had gotten mixed up in his brain. He would put his money on the second option, really. But then, he wasn’t a doctor and had no idea why a young man would suddenly believe he was living in 1967.

It was foolish to try to work it out. He should simply make sure this man got to see a doctor that would get him checked out.

He cleared his throat, trying to put his most reasonable face on. “Mr. Stark, I understand that you are confused right now, but I’m sure, once we’re out of here and you have been looked after by a medical professional, everything will turn out fine.”

“I am _not_ confused!” Mr. Stark exclaimed. “Honestly, just tell me, what are you after, money? Just get whatever you want and let me go!”

“Please, Mr. Stark, calm down,” Steve said, still trying to hold on to his best ‘reasonable and trustworthy’ persona. It was kind of a bad fit, really, since these weren’t exactly the kinds of situations where he shined. Calming panicked citizens during a supervillain attack, sure, but not when they believed that he might be the bad guy. There was a reason why he usually left more delicate matters to Jan.

Mr. Stark glared at Steve intensely, his face clearly spelling out his complete distrust of Steve.

“What kind of game are you playing here?” he asked.

“No games,” Steve replied. He gathered himself before he slowly and carefully made his way over to where Mr. Stark was standing. Mr. Stark looked tense, but he stood his ground and did not back away as Steve approached. “My first and foremost concern at the moment is to get you out of here.”

It could be a trap, possibly. But no matter how much he felt that this situation was extremely strange, he didn’t feel that his man was a danger to him.

After Steve’s application of all of his rhetorical skills, Mr. Stark finally agreed to come with him and get out of the old, dilapidated building. He looked suspicious the entire way, glaring at his surroundings as if they had somehow personally insulted him.

It was only on the way back to the Avengers headquarters that it clicked why the name Tony Stark had seemed so strangely familiar to Steve. The building they’d been in had once been a small factory for Stark Industries, but it had been abandoned and left to rot a long time ago.

To find a Mr. Stark in a former Stark Industries building was likely not a coincidence. Maybe he had only remembered that name after the whack on his head because he had seen it somewhere in the building. On some of the rotting machine parts, probably. 

* * *

When they had left, Steve had contacted Jan and given her a heads-up, so be the time they arrived at the headquarter, she was already eagerly waiting for them. She gave Mr. Stark (still glaring suspiciously at his surroundings) one look and then sighed.

“Steve,” she said. “What have you picked up this time?”

Steve lowered his voice, leaning closer to Jan so that Mr. Stark wouldn’t hear them. “He says his name is ‘Tony Stark’ and he believes it’s the year 1967. I have no idea where he came from. I lit up a random candle in the Stark Industries building and it exploded. The smoke from the explosion might have forced him out from wherever he’d been hiding.”

“1967?” Jan repeated, her eyebrows rising. She shot another quick look at Mr Stark, who glared back. “Well, his styling is certainly on point. That’s peak 60’s fashion.”

Jan would certainly know, considering that her actual job was fashion designing.

“I’m not sure what to do with him,” Steve continued. “We should probably start with trying to find out who he really is. And maybe get him checked out.”

Jan considered the situation for a moment.

“You know,” she said slowly. “It’s strange that the name Tony Stark would pop up, especially in combination with the year 1967. If my memory doesn’t deceive me, Anthony Edward Stark was the son of the rich industrialist Howard Stark, who made a fortune with his company after the war. Of course, the company still exists today, as you know. Stark Industries. Tony Stark was to take over his father’s duties in time, and he was a genius by all accounts. But before he could step up as the new head of Stark Industries, he tragically died in 1967. They say it’s been a tragic accident, but there have always been rumours that there was more to it than that.”

“But why would he believe he is Tony Stark?” Steve asked, gesturing at Mr. Stark, who gave him a poisonous glare for his efforts. “It makes no sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Jan agreed. “But that won’t stop us.”

Steve eventually handed Tony off to Jan, getting her to promise that she should take care of him and maybe recruit Natasha or Thor into keeping an eye on Mr. Stark, too, just to make sure that there wouldn’t be any issues.

They had taken Tony’s fingerprints and a photo in the hope that the more data they had, the more likely they were to find out who he really was.

Tony had been extremely fascinated with the came that Jan had produced out of her bag, taking it off her eagerly and turning it around in his hands, apparently just one screwdriver short of taking it apart.

It reminded Steve the tiniest little bit of himself when he’d woken up in the future for the first time, faced with all the technological advancements, only with a lot less hostility and a lot more enthusiasm. 

* * *

After the photo session had been finished, Steve headed off to research Mr. Stark’s identity, while Jan took Mr. Stark to see a doctor.

The fingerprints they had taken had no match in the system, and after digging around aimlessly for a while, Steve decided to look up the deceased Anthony Stark instead.

What he found was… overwhelming. There were endless articles about him and his famous father, articles about his status as the most eligible bachelor and his undeniable appeal in women’s magazines, articles about all the different conspiracy theories after his death. There were also photos. An incredible amount of photos.

And, Steve had to agree, the man in the photos looked remarkably like the man whose picture he had just taken moments before. In fact, they looked the same down to the last detail.

Before he knew it, Steve had sent a request to the responsible authorities to get him a copy of the files of the investigation after Anthony Stark’s untimely death. It was likely to be a dead end in this case, but if anything, the original Mr. Stark’s death and Obadiah Stane’s subsequent rise to power seemed highly suspicious. A second look was doubtlessly warranted.

He decided to give up for the night just when his phone started vibrating. The call was from Jan, so he picked up quickly.

“Did something happen?” he asked.

“Well, not really,” came Jan’s not very reassuring answer. “The physical went fine, the doctor couldn’t detect any injuries or any kind of trauma. But he has no idea how modern technology works, apparently, and then he got his hands on some tools and started taking everything apart. He took apart my TV, Steve! And then he put it back together, and not only does it work, the annoying flimmering I’ve been complaining about is also gone! I had to stop him before he took all of my kitchen appliances apart, too!”

“So he’s handy,” Steve said, unsure of what else he was supposed to say to that.

“Handy?” Jan repeated, incredulous. “Handy?? Steve, I had to explain the internet to him because he’d never heard of it, and 30 minutes later, he’s picking fights with people in internet forums! I have no idea what’s going on in his brain!”

“I’ll be there soon,” Steve assured her, ending the call.

Oh well, he thought to himself. Better than a horde of Hydra agents, probably. 

* * *

Mr. Stark was busy cursing at the display of a laptop in his lap when Steve arrived in the living room in Jan’s apartment. At some point, Mr. Stark had changed out of his 60s suit and into something more casual and much more modern and comfortable. (It was probably one of Jan’s prototypes that she was currently working on.) Steve couldn’t help but notice how much better he looked without the pomp of the suit. Somehow, it seemed much more… approachable?

Not to mention that the tousled hair was very cute.

Natasha was there too, curled up in one of the armchairs and staring at Mr. Stark like a cat observing a particularly fascinating and unusual prey.

Jan rolled her eyes at Steve when he entered, waving one hand at Mr. Stark in a gesture that clearly spelled ‘see what I mean, this is ridiculous.’

“They all say I’m dead!” Mr. Stark exclaimed, shaking the laptop a little as if that would magically change the contents of whatever website he was currently browsing. “I’m obviously alive!”

“Well, ‘you’ haven’t been seen for the past fifty years,” Steve said. “These things tend to happen.”

Mr. Stark looked up, surprise written all over his face.

“Hey, it’s fake Captain America,” he eventually said, overly cheerfully. “Well, not so much now. I gotta say, I dig the All American Hotness in t-shirt and jeans.”

When Steve raised an eyebrow at him, Mr. Stark raised one right back.

“What?” he asked. “The internet tells me that gay marriage is legal now. Don’t be a homophobe.”

“That’s really not the issue here,” Steve said, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. He was pretty sure that he of all things _wasn’t_ a homophobe. “The issue is that no matter how similar you might look to the late Anthony Stark, there’s no way that you’re the real one. It’s been over fifty years since his death, and by all accounts, Anthony Stark should by getting close to eighty now. You don’t even look thirty yet.”

“That’s because I’m not,” Mr. Stark replied. “And it’s not like you of all people have room to talk, Sleeping Beauty On Ice.”

“That was all technology,” Steve said, frowning. “They tested me thoroughly and found out that I’m capable of surviving certain conditions that a normal person wouldn’t. So instead of freezing to death, my bodily functions just shut down enough to put me into a deep sleep.”

“How convenient,” Mr. Stark groused. “Of course, I have no convenient explanation for why I’m here, since I don’t even know how I ended up in that building in the first place.”

Natasha murmured something in Russian and Steve looked over at her.

“What?” he asked.

“Witchcraft,” she said simply.

“Okay,” Steve said doubtfully. “And since when have you become a specialist of the occult?”

“I have many talents,” Natasha answered cryptically and gave him her best razor-sharp smile. (Steve decided he didn’t want to know.)

Jan clapped her hands.

“Right!” she said brightly. “I knew there was a reason why we keep Stephen Strange on the emergency contacts list.”

* * *

Jan called Dr. Strange and Dr. Strange said he would come after making all of them wait for a bit because of some other, and much more important, “supernatural emergency.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Stark kept poking at the internet, cursing whenever he found something he didn’t approve of, and murmuring to himself whenever he did approve of something.

When Dr. Strange finally arrived after a seemingly endless wait, he took one look at Mr. Stark before he turned around and fixed Jan, Natasha and Steve with a glare.

“So who was it that dabbled in Necromancy?” he asked. “Because that-” he jabbed sharply at Mr. Stark, sitting on the couch, “-really shouldn’t be alive.”

The three of them exchanged glances with each other.

“That would probably be you, Steve,” Jan suggested when they had been quiet for too long.

“Me?” Steve asked, a little shocked at the accusation. He would _never_.

“Well, you lit that candle in the old factory,” Natasha said. “If you think about it, it’s pretty odd to just find a candle lying around in an old, abandoned factory. Someone must have left it there on purpose.”

Well, one thing was certainly true about that. Normal candles didn’t just suddenly flash blue and explode. That left the question: Who had put it there, and why?

Steve had an uncomfortable flashback to all the different supervillain organisations that had been sighted in the area recently. Next to him, Jan’s expression told him that she was thinking about the same thing.

“Can we reverse it somehow?” Steve asked.

Dr. Strange sent him a flat look that clearly spelled that _he_ certainly wasn’t going to dabble in Necromancy to help them get rid of a reportedly dead person.

“We can’t just let him stay here!” Steve reminded them.

“Why not?” Jan asked, and her brow furrowed dangerously. “It’s not like this is _his_ fault!”

“Exactly!” Steve exclaimed. “He’s supposed to be dead!”

“He died with 27, for fuck’s sake!” Jan spat. “He might have wanted a little more from life than that!”

It was true, and Steve couldn’t deny that. And it made him angry.

But he also knew how it was to be completely out of time. A lot of people that Tony had known before were dead now. And the other… Steve didn’t want to think about that. The only thing that he had really left was…

“What the fuck did Obie do to my company?” Tony shouted, glaring at the laptop still in front of him. “What is this? The future was supposed to be brighter, not full of weapons!”

Jan made a conflicted face and walked over to the sofa. Tony looked up with a genuinely upset expression on his face.

“The future was supposed to be flying cars and planetary travel, not high-tech wars,” he told her quietly. The heartbreak in his voice was one that Steve was only too familiar with. He too had once believed that the future was bright.

“I know,” Jan said with a sigh, putting a gentle hand on Tony’s shoulder. “But humanity has yet to learn how to be peaceful.”

Tony looked at her sadly. “We have already gone to the depths of depravity, how much further do they want to go?”

Then, suddenly, his expression changed into something much more determined.

“I’m going to dismantle them,” he declared, as if it was an easy thing to do.

“You’re officially dead,” Steve reminded him. “Technically, you don’t even exist.”

Tony glared at Steve as if he wanted to set him on fire by the force of his sheer will alone.

“We’ll see about that,” he eventually said, getting up and stomping out of the room.

Natasha sent Steve a judgemental and yet faintly amused look, and then turned to follow Tony.

“Don’t you just have a way with words,” Jan sighed.

Well. He couldn’t exactly deny that. 

* * *

Tony certainly didn’t waste any time. Steve wasn’t sure how he made it all work, the trauma of his sudden arrival in the future, the fact that he had been dead for fifty years, everything.

Steve was sure that Natasha had her fingers in there somewhere, managing that Tony got his officially approved identity complete with social security number and tax returns suspiciously quickly. She also supplied him with contacts, Steve was sure, even though she would never admit that.

Once he was legally alive, Tony went to work without looking back. He immersed himself into the study of bleeding edge technology and before Steve even knew it, Tony had acquired the patents for three new kinds of smartphones, one paper screen, and a better hybrid motor for cars, among other things.

“It’s frightening,” Jan had said at one point. “Like, I knew they used to call him a genius, and he was actively involved in the research and development of Stark Industries when it had still been his father’s company. But it’s like the technological advancement since the sixties has completely unshackled him, as if he’s finally free to do the things he could only dream about before. It’s frightening and awe-inspiring at the same time.”

In the privacy of his own mind, Steve completely agreed with Jan. It was amazing to see the transformation, and how effortlessly Tony seemed to adapt to the 21st century. After a short while, it felt as if he had never led a different life, as if he had never died at all.

And then, whenever Tony caught Steve observing him, he would look back with a serious expression on his face before it would transform into a daring smile.

Steve never knew how to react to that (Was it a challenge? Or smugness) and just stared back blankly, his heart beating a little bit faster in his chest. 

* * *

The true sensation came when Tony’s newly founded firm, Stark Solutions, got powerful enough in a very short time to be able to take over Stark Industries. At his first press conference, he announced that he would merge the two companies under the name of Stark Industries, but that the weapon production would cease immediately.

Until this point, Stark Industries had been at the forefront of the weapons market, and suddenly people were scrambling in a panic because Tony had decided that it was a better use of his time to gear his tech towards civilian use.

Tony didn’t care about the media backlash, and he laughed at the military threatening him, making their lives harder on purpose.

Steve looked at Tony and sometimes wondered how a dead man was more invested into the living word than many people who had yet their lives in front of them.

They never talked about it, but Steve had looked through the files of the investigation of Tony’s death, and he had come to the conclusion that there had been foul play. All signs pointed towards Obadiah Stane, who had had Tony killed for the sake of his own personal success.

He couldn’t prove it, but he was sure that Tony had looked through the files as well, and come to the same conclusion. It was only a pity that Obadiah had died in the 90s, Steve thought, because if it was worth beating one person shapeless with his shield, Obadiah was that person. He didn’t really take pride in these feelings, but honestly, who cared about pride when powerhungry men murdered innocent people to get what they wanted. He’d been Tony’s godfather, for fuck’s sake.

Among the high society, it was pretty much an open secret that the Tony Stark that had suddenly appeared from seemingly nowhere to become one of the most powerful people in the tech business practically overnight really was the Tony Stark that had reportedly died in the 60s, but strangely, they gobbled him right up. No one questioned him, and no one asked about Obadiah, instead loving everything he did and panting after him in obvious and humiliating ways that made Steve roll his eyes.

He was the king of the court, and everyone knew it.

Steve couldn’t care less about that.

* * *

 

Steve’s personal high point came one night when Tony caught him at the Avengers headquarters just when he was preparing to go home after a relatively calm day.

“You’ve never asked me to join,” Tony said by way of greeting, looking at Steve as if the answers were written on his face somehow.

Steve shouldered his bag and walked to the door Tony was currently leaning against, trying not the be too obvious in his appreciation of Tony in jeans and a t-shirt that hugged his figure just so.

“I’m not making a dead person join a band of superheroes,” he replied, but the jab had long lost its sting. Steve would call Tony a dead person and Tony would smirk and show him all the way in which he most certainly was _very_ alive.

It was… addictive.

“I am richer than God,” Tony said with a slight smirk, but Steve knew it was neither a boast nor a joke.

Granted, most of that money would never even get close to Tony, since the moment it had been earned, it would be reinvested in one of his companies or his loyal employees as if he was compelled to do so, but the point stood.

“So what, are you planning to be our Daddy Long Legs?” Steve snarked, shooting Tony a grin of his own.

“Something much better,” Tony replied with an equally predatory smile. “I have a suit of armor.”

Steve looked at Tony in surprise. “You built a weapon?”

“No,” Tony replied. “Not that it doesn’t have weapons, but that’s really not what I had in mind. I built a defense. Something that will stop people becoming the victims of violence. People shouldn’t live in fear of death every day. I thought this is what you stand for.”

“I do,” Steve found himself answering.

“Then,” Tony murmured, stepping closer to Steve and curling his fingers into the collar of his shirt before pulling him down to eye level, “why don’t you show me what you’re made of?”

For a moment, they both breathed the same air.

“Show me that suit,” Steve said, feeling a little breathless.

“Gladly,” Tony smirked. “Oh my _Captain_.”

* * *

Honestly speaking, Steve’s mother had raised him better. No good things came out of consorting with the dead, he’d been taught, and all the better if you didn’t even try. All it would do was to invite more trouble into your live than it was worth. His mother would be so disappointed in him if she knew what he had done. And she had been right; it had invited a lot of trouble into his life, more than he really knew what to do with, some days.

But here was where she had been wrong: All the trouble was utterly worth it. And if she had ever met Tony, she would probably agree with him.

Tony, certainly, was worth the exception.


End file.
